Happiness Quote by Kurt Masur

Masur’s line is a bracing corrective to a certain modern temptation: treating the score as raw material for self-expression rather than a complete, argued work with its own internal logic. He’s talking like a Kapellmeister in the old European tradition, where the conductor’s job is not to “have a take” so much as to act as a high-level translator. “Since the composer has said everything” is a deliberately absolutist claim, less metaphysics than discipline: start from the premise that the piece is already finished, and your ego becomes an obstacle you have to manage, not a feature you get to monetize.

The subtext is aimed at the cult of interpretive personality - the idea that artistry equals deviation. Masur doesn’t deny interpretation; he redraws its boundaries. “If you discover everything” frames interpretation as excavation, not renovation. It’s a moral argument disguised as craft advice: respect is not politeness, it’s an ethic of listening, a refusal to confuse preference with insight. “Don’t try to say it’s your taste” skewers the lazy alibi conductors reach for when they can’t justify a choice musically: taste as a mask for arbitrariness.

Context matters here. Masur came up in the German orchestral ecosystem where fidelity to text (Werktreue) was both an aesthetic stance and a cultural self-policing after the 20th century’s ideological abuses. His final note - “this respect is still there” - sounds almost relieved, like he’s watching a performance culture drifting toward celebrity and still spotting a residue of reverence for the composer’s authority.